Something Wicked (13 page)

‘That is very kind of him to say so. It’s true that I have given my life to looking after the sick here but that is nothing to what Burnham Market has given me. To put it simply, it is my world and if, God forbid, we go to war again, I shall “do my bit”, as we used to say in the last conflagration, for England, and by England I’m afraid I shall mean this little piece of it.’

‘Were you in the army in the war? I was just too young, thank the Lord.’

‘And I was too old to go to the front but we had our bad times here – the Spanish flu in 1918 and 1919 . . .’ He shook his head. ‘We were burying people who had succumbed to it as late as 1920. We came to the conclusion it was brought to Burnham Market by soldiers returning home after the war.’

‘I noticed that when I was strolling round the church-yard,’ Edward said. ‘Talking of which, I saw a gravestone for a young man called Peter Lamming. I knew a Peter Lamming when I was in Kenya. I wonder if it could possibly be the same one.’

‘I imagine it was, Lord Edward. How very strange! He was a nephew by marriage of my dear wife. He was married to Daphne’s daughter, Isabella. He died of . . .’ He hesitated. ‘He died four years ago and was buried there.’

‘So the stone is not above a grave? That’s most unusual, surely?’

‘Alas! It is above a grave but not his.’ Dr Booth spread his hands in a graphic expression of despair. ‘Isabella came back to live with us after Peter died. She insisted on erecting a memorial to him – somewhere for her to lay flowers and remember him. The rector was most understanding.’

‘So Daphne was your wife’s sister?’

‘Did I not say so? Yes, there were three sisters. Daphne was the oldest, then Hermione and then Violet, my wife. Daphne and her husband – he was in the army in India – died in a car crash when Isabella was five and we brought her up. We loved her as though she was our own child. She was a great joy to us as . . .’ He hesitated but obviously decided that he had gone too far to stop. ‘You see, we found – Violet and I – that we could have no children of our own.’

‘But you said Peter’s tombstone is a grave?’ Edward wrinkled his brow.

‘You may well look puzzled, Lord Edward.’ He sighed heavily. ‘Izzy, as we called her, died just a year ago and we buried her where she would have wanted. We are waiting to have her name engraved below Peter’s on the stone.’

‘She died of . . .? Forgive me! I do not wish to intrude on your grief.’

‘No, that’s all right, Lord Edward. The truth is that it’s a relief to talk about it. Violet won’t. In fact, she cannot even bring herself to commission the lettering on the stone. It’s as though Izzy cannot really be dead until her name appears below Peter’s.’

Edward nodded his head sympathetically. ‘Was it . . . an accident?’

‘She became ill and I’m afraid I did not take it seriously enough. Her appendix ruptured and she died before I could get her to hospital.’

‘I’m so sorry. What a tragedy! I remember Peter well. He was a very nice boy. You are sure I haven’t upset you? It must be very painful for you . . .’

‘No, no, Lord Edward. As I told you, I don’t mind talking about it. I find it eases my heart but please don’t mention anything of what I have told you to Violet unless she raises it herself.’

‘I won’t, of course.’

‘Death may have no dominion over the departed, as the Prayer Book tells us, but sometimes it seems to have over the living. I gather from Charlotte’s letter that you want to talk to my wife about poor Hermione. Another tragedy! Such a dreadful business. Violet was very distressed.’

‘Were they close?’

‘Not close exactly but they got on well enough. They had a shared interest.’

‘Gardening?’

‘Yes. Although, as Violet is the first to admit, she was never in Hermione’s class. Anyway, I’ll take you to her. I have my rounds to do. I expect you will be gone before I’m through so I’ll say goodbye. What a coincidence you having met Peter in Kenya and knowing little Lottie so well – though I suppose she isn’t so little now. I’m afraid we haven’t seen her for a long time.’

They walked across the lawn towards a kneeling figure. ‘Violet, my dear, here is Lord Edward Corinth.’ Dr Booth put out his hand and Edward took it. For a moment, he thought he saw a warning of some kind in his eyes but decided it must have been his imagination. The doctor smiled. ‘I’ll leave you two to chat. Goodbye again, Lord Edward. I am so pleased to have met you.’

As she struggled to her feet – she had been on her knees weeding the border – Edward saw that Violet Booth was a handsome, stocky woman who in her youth might have been beautiful. She had strong bones and a firm chin. He thought she would not be someone to cross but her greeting was friendly enough, if somewhat gruff. When he complimented her on her garden – the border was full of interesting-looking plants – she softened and pointed out a few of which she was particularly proud. He praised her gardening skills and compared her to her sister but she strongly denied being in the same class, as her husband had predicted.

‘Oh, no, Lord Edward. Hermione is . . . was the gardener in the family. Even as a small child, she had her own patch which she called her allotment or rather, since she could not manage the word, her “lotment”.’

They went into the house where Mrs Booth took off her gardening apron and straw hat and washed her hands under the kitchen tap. There was no servant in evidence and she seemed unembarrassed at letting Edward follow her into the kitchen. He wondered if it was some sort of test.

‘You have come a long way for a cup of tea,’ she said, filling a utilitarian brown teapot from the ancient-looking kettle simmering on the Aga. Edward put her down as one of those women who prided themselves on their no-nonsense approach to life. He could imagine her saying, ‘I don’t stand on ceremony,’ but instead she asked, ‘So you are a friend of Charlotte’s?’

Edward spoke warmly of the Hassels, and Mrs Booth allowed herself to say that she had always liked Charlotte but could not abide her books.

‘I know she is very clever but I can’t understand them. I prefer Dorothy Whipple.
Greenbanks?
’

‘Perhaps having known the author as a child makes it difficult to read her as objectively you would a stranger,’ Edward ventured.

‘Maybe, but I blame it all on that Mrs Woolf. I bought one of hers –
Mrs Dalloway
, I think it was called. I couldn’t get past page thirty. Gibberish! And now everyone has to write like that.’

They went into the drawing-room, a light, attractive room with a good view of the garden. ‘Sugar?’ she inquired, as though he would be judged on his response.

‘No, thank you.’ Edward cleared his throat. ‘I think Charlotte will have mentioned why I wanted to talk to you.’

‘You think my sister was deliberately poisoned?’ she said forcefully but, underneath the bravado, he could see that she was upset.

‘I’m afraid I do. I don’t want you to think I’m muckraking. I believe there’s a dangerous man at large who has killed at least two other people in addition to your sister. And he has to be stopped.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Didn’t you think it odd when you found that piece of paper in the pocket of her boiler suit?’

‘The one with . . .?’

‘Yes.’

‘I did think it odd but . . .’

‘I know – it’s a big leap from finding that quotation to thinking someone murdered her, and it might be best if I tell you why I have come to that conclusion.’

He recounted the whole story of his dentist’s murder and the link with the deaths of General Lowther and James Herold. She listened without interrupting.

‘I see what you mean,’ she said thoughtfully.

‘Was there nothing that puzzled you when you were cleaning out your sister’s house? By the way, what is happening to it? The garden’s famous. Is someone going to take it on?’

Mrs Booth shrugged her shoulders. ‘What can I do? We can’t afford to keep up two houses and my husband’s work is here. He has been the local doctor for . . . ever since he qualified. His whole life is here. This is his family’s house, where he grew up. We couldn’t move and, to be frank, we would be very grateful for the money from the sale of her house. A place like this is expensive to keep up.’

‘Has your husband always lived here? I mean, presumably he trained in London.’

‘Yes, at Guy’s.’

‘And university?’

‘Alfred didn’t go to university and, before you ask, he was educated in Burnham Market. The Booths were an old family but never rich. Why are you interested?’

‘Sorry, I was being nosy – a bad habit of mine. May I ask . . .? Your husband mentioned that there were three of you . . . three sisters.’

‘Yes. Daphne died many years ago with her husband – in a motor accident.’

‘They were in India, your husband said?’

‘Yes, but the accident occurred when they were back in England on leave – outside Godalming. Fortunately, Isabella was not with them. So that just leaves me – the youngest. Does that make me a suspect?’ She attempted a smile but it faded into a grimace of pain.

Edward was non-committal. He wondered why she had thought to give the exact location of Daphne’s fatal accident. It was as though she wanted him to know every last detail – as though she was punishing herself.

‘Isabella was where?’

‘They had rented a house near Smithfield in the City – Cripplegate. Isabella was there with her nanny.’

‘And you can’t think of anything curious . . .?’ he persisted.

Mrs Booth held up her hand almost as though she was warding him off. ‘Just let me think for a moment.’ She wrinkled up her eyes as she thought back. ‘I really can’t remember anything odd,’ she said finally. Edward leaned back in his chair, disappointed. ‘No, wait! I noticed that Hermione had been looking at her photo-graph albums. They were all spread out on the table. I would never have thought of my sister as nostalgic. If she went to her albums, it must have been for some reason – not just idle retrospection.’

‘Have you got the albums here?’

‘Yes. I didn’t know what to do with them. I couldn’t sell them and I couldn’t destroy them.’

‘May I see them?’

‘Of course. They’re in one of the outhouses with the rest of my sister’s belongings.’

Mrs Booth took Edward to the outhouse – little more than a shed – and they looked gloomily at the pile of odds and ends she had not liked to sell or burn. He was inclined to wax philosophical about how little was left from a long life but changed his mind. Hermione Totteridge’s true legacy was her garden and the books she had written.

‘Some people compared her to Gertrude Jekyll,’ her sister said, as if he had voiced his thoughts, ‘but that’s wrong. Jekyll was a garden designer. My sister was more interested in the science of gardening. She knew so much about the way plants work. She discovered several new species and bred literally hundreds of new plants. In the end, I believe her work was more important than Jekyll’s but of course I’m prejudiced.’

‘You admired her a great deal?’

‘I did but I won’t pretend she was easy. It’s no surprise that she never found a man who could live with her. There was an authoritarian streak in her which could be . . .’ Mrs Booth hesitated before settling for ‘off-putting’. She pointed to an old tin trunk. ‘I put the albums in there.’

‘May I take it into the house?’

‘If you want to but I don’t understand why . . .’

‘Nor do I,’ Edward replied, lifting the trunk and finding it heavier than he had expected. ‘But if we can find . . .’ He grunted. ‘How many albums are there?’

‘Seven or eight.’

In the kitchen, Mrs Booth opened the trunk and took out seven battered morocco-bound albums.

‘Can you remember if your sister had been looking at one in particular?’

‘No, I don’t recall any of them being open. I looked through one or two myself. I confess, I’m not a sentimental person but, now both my sisters are dead, I had to weep a little when I found a photograph of our parents. Looking at it, it suddenly struck me there’s no one else alive now who remembers them or me when I was a child. Oh dear! You must think I’m being very maudlin.’

‘Was your sister a keen photographer?’

‘She liked photographing her garden – keeping a record. She was given a box Brownie – one of the early ones – when she must have been about seventeen. She was very proud of it and took to photographing all of us.’

‘Where you were brought up?’

‘In Kenya, but I was the only one who was born there. My father was a farmer and he took advantage of a government offer of assisted passage to Africa and the promise of free land for would-be farmers. Despite having a sickly wife and two small children, he decided to take the risk. He ended up trying to create a farm out of uncleared bush – back-breaking work. I was born a year after they arrived. I must have been an “accident” and doubt I was very welcome as it was difficult enough to feed two children but, if that’s what they felt, they never showed it. In many ways it was a paradise for children. Not for adults, though. We were too young to know about it but it was terribly hard for my parents. Mother got sick and died – a mosquito gave her malaria and we didn’t have quinine. My father struggled on but eventually the farm failed and he died of what I suppose the Victorians would have called a broken heart. It was particularly hard on Daphne. As the eldest she had to take on Mother’s role and look after Hermione and me, at least until my father died.’

‘What happened then?’

‘We were taken in by a nice old couple called Cunningham – it was they who gave Hermione the camera – and we all decamped to England.’

‘When was this?’

‘1874 when I was ten and Hermione was fifteen and promising to be a beauty. Daphne was seventeen and mad about boys. I remember hating England. It was gloomy and so cold after Africa and we had to go to boarding school. We hated it. Daphne and I both got married but Hermione became . . . well, I’d almost say obsessed with gardening. She had caught the bug early. We’d all got interested in gardening as children in Kenya. It was a wonderful place to grow plants. There were diseases, of course, and Hermione was always trying to find ways to keep her crop healthy. We mainly grew vegetables. Our parents encouraged us to help the family economy. I was made responsible for some chickens, I remember. How I loathed them! Anyway, Hermione got keen on the science of it all.’